Southern Company (The)

Good afternoon. My name is Scott, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Southern Company third quarter 2022 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. At that time, you can press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone to kill for a question. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Scott Gamble, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer.

Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon and welcome to Southern Company's third quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today are Tom Fanning, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Southern Company, and Dan Tucker, Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind you we'll be making forward-looking statements today in addition to providing historical information. Various important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, including those discussed in our Form 10-K, Form 10Qs, and subsequent filings. In addition, we'll provide non-GAAP financial information on this call. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measure are included in the financial information we released this morning, as well as the slides for this conference call, which are both available on our Investor Relations website at investor.southerncompany.com. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Tom Fanning.

Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Our third quarter financial results continue to support our full year earnings objectives, and the economies within our service territories remain strong, including customer growth and economic activity that has outpaced our expectations. Given our financial performance through the third quarter, we expect full year adjusted earnings per share near the top of our earnings guidance range. Before turning the call over to Dan for a more detailed look at our financial performance, I'd first like to provide an update on the recent progress at Plant Vogel Units 3 and 4. Importantly, the projected completion timeline and capital cost forecast for both units remain consistent with what we outlined last quarter. Since our last call, the site team has continued to make substantial progress on Unit 3 highlighted by the successful achievement of several major milestones, including submitting the all ITAC complete letter, receiving the 103G finding from the NRC, which signifies that license acceptance criteria for Unit 3 have been met, and successfully completing the safe transfer of all 157 fuel assemblies from Unit 3 spent fuel pool to the reactor core early last week. Fuel load marked another historic and pivotal milestone towards startup and commercial operations. The focus over the next couple of months turns to final preparations and testing of systems primarily associated with the electric power production side of the plant and achieving the pristine conditions in the nuclear island necessary for startup activities. The next major milestone for Unit 3 is initial criticality, or the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, which is projected in January. Once this important milestone is achieved, plant operators can begin the prescribed testing sequence, which includes a series of power ascensions and reductions, various sustained power output plateaus, and multiple force trips to test the unit's safety systems. This rigorous process is intended to demonstrate the performance of the unit under a variety of conditions and its readiness to be included in reliable dispatch and to be placed in service for the benefit of customers. We continue to project Unit 3 will be placed in service by the end of the first quarter 2023. Turning to Unit 4, Open vessel testing was completed in August, and direct construction is now approximately 97% complete. Electrical production, in particular electrical terminations, remains a key area of focus. To support our projected December 2023 in-service date, recent electrical production levels must be sustained for several more weeks. Testing is expected to become the critical path as the project team progresses towards future milestones of cold hydro testing and the start of hot functional testing, which is projected by the end of the first quarter 2023. Dan, I'll now turn the call over to you.